More from McGill In The Headlines

In unpublished research, McGill bioethicist Jonathan Kimmelman and colleagues asked cancer experts to forecast the probability of more than a dozen clinical trials hitting their primary endpoint. They found that the predictions overall were not very accurate, and if anything were too pessimistic. Stat News

The CRISPR genome-editing method may just have become even more powerful. Uri David Akavia’s team at McGill University in Canada has managed to repair mutations in 90 per cent of target cells using CRISPR – the best success rate yet. New Scientist

Newsweek | “Usually when we see a short gamma-ray burst, the jet emission generated gets bright for a short time as it smashes into the surrounding medium—then fades as the system stops injecting energy into the outflow,” said McGill University astrophysicist Daryl Haggard in a statement. “This one is different; it’s definitely not a simple, plain-Jane narrow jet.”

"No one gains by coming up with inaccurate and exaggerated estimates," says lead author Dr. Brett Thombs, a professor in the department of psychiatry at McGill University. "What we do need to understand is what the burden is out there, how many people [have depression], and then we need to really advocate strongly to make sure those people get better care."

"We found something that is clearly in an extreme place and the extreme location may create a phenomenon that is one of the biggest astrophysical mysteries of recent times," offered study co-author Victoria Kaspi, a professor at McGill University and leading voice on pulsars and neutron stars, in a statement.

Some medical students at McGill University in Montreal are getting a firsthand look at what working in an Indigenous community is like. It’s through a new program that includes a grassroots approach to healthcare.

The study, published in Child Development, has found new reasons to believe that Autistic children who are bilingual have increased cognitive flexibility compared to children that are monolingual. According to Professor Aparna Nadig, the senior author of the paper, from McGill University, this research has been a long time coming…

McGill University meteorology professor John Gyakum, along with the revered late Massachusetts Institute of Technology meteorologist Fred Sanders, first coined the term in a paper they published in 1980. They used the phrase to describe powerful cyclones that get their energy from rapid drops in pressure caused by hot and cold temperatures colliding.

That could mean the jets of high-speed radiation sent out by the explosion were not aimed directly at Earth, and were instead slightly off axis, says Daryl Haggard of McGill University, whose team used the Chandra X-ray Observatory to spy on the merger.
Read more: National Geographic

Minister of Finance Bill Morneau, Minister of Science Kirsty Duncan and McGill University’s Martha Crago attend a prebudget discussion with scientists and researchers at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto on Dec. 15, 2017.
Read more: The Globe and Mail

As a consequence, researchers such as Abhishek Gupta are trying to help Montreal lead the world in ensuring AI is developed responsibly. "The spotlight of the world is on (Montreal)," said Gupta, an AI ethics researcher at McGill University who is also a software developer in cybersecurity at Ericsson. His bi-monthly "AI ethics meet-up" brings together people from around the city who want to influence the way researchers are thinking about machine-learning.
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"To some extent, it is beyond the control of world leaders, and has more to do with the cycle of protest," says Rex Brynen, a political science professor at McGill University whose work focuses on the conflict. "Most Western leaders will be trying to calm things. The Palestine Authority, although deeply dismayed by the U.S. decision, has no interest in protests getting out of hand. Nor does Jordan....

Ask Montreal pain specialist Yoram Shir about the deadly opioid crisis ravaging North America, and he immediately calls for perspective on the rivers of narcotic pills running into so many homes. Nothing here is black or white, says Shir, director of the McGill University Health Centre’s Alan Edwards Pain Management Unit, starting with the ubiquitous nature of pain. One in four people suffers from chronic pain — a condition that is arduously resistant to therapy....